Messiah to Memorabilia: Exploring the Fitzwilliam Museum’s Music Collection
From February 2026, Royal Holloway PhD student Adrianna Chmielewska had the opportunity to carry out her second year placement at the Fitzwilliam Museum. This blog showcases a couple of highlights which reflect the sheer variety of the Museum’s Music collection. What fascinates me about them is that, like many historical objects, they leave us with as many questions as answers….
Exploring AI at the Museum of Zoology
For the last year, the Museum of Zoology has invited the public to chat to museum animals in an innovative AI experiment. What has the Museum learnt? Since October 2024, visitors have been able to ‘chat’ with 13 specimens in the Museum of Zoology, from the dodo and the fin whale to a cockroach or a butterfly. You simply scan…
Celebrating Equiano’s Cambridge connections
This Black History Month blog shares our recent work to explore and celebrate the Cambridge connections of Olaudah Equiano, Britain’s most important Black Abolitionist. Within his 52-year lifespan, the time that Olaudah Equiano spent in Cambridgeshire might appear insignificant. His documented associations lasted less than seven years from summer 1789 until spring 1796. And yet the people whom Equiano met…
